Silent Winter?

Silent Winter?

Biopharmed crops are turning
wildlife-and us-into lab animals.

WILLOWS, California-A
winter storm is arriving here at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. Ducks
and geese are circling above the ponds, and as the first rain drops begin to
fall, the birds start to drop from the sky by the thousands-feet outstretched,
necks arched, and wings beating back as they land on the water. Overhead,
hundreds of black ibis etch thin rippling lines against the dark gray clouds.
The noise is phenomenal-the squawking
of mallards and pintails, the honking of Snow and Ross's geese, along with the
sound of their wings flushing the air. In the background, resident red- wing
blackbirds, already hidden in the reedy marshes, let out an occasional
high-pitched trill.

The
annual return of hundreds of thousands of migratory waterfowl to the Sacramento
Valley is quite a spectacle. From the birds' perspective, the Valley is a
tempting buffet. In the winter, flooded rice fields and riparian habitat offer
their favorite aquatic foods and grasses. There are tons of seeds and grains to
glean, left over from harvesting almost a half million acres of rice and other
crops, and no less than six carefully managed National Wildlife Refuges to
choose from. But these days, both resident and returning birds are feeding on
experimental rice fields that have been planted with genetically engineered
strains, including at least 50 acres of rice that has been engineered with
human genes.

The
intrusion of transgenic rice into the Sacramento Valley presents significant
risks to wildlife and to the delicate ecosystems on which it depends. And it
threatens the $500 million California rice industry, which has worked hard to
develop a high quality product (including a thriving organic rice business) and
an environmentally friendly image through its efforts to protect waterfowl and
shorebird habitat. Now the possibility that rice with human genes and other
novel proteins could also contaminate the human food supply is stirring up a
storm of controversy.

So
far, California's food crops have been free of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs.) But two agrochemical corporations, Monsanto and Aventis/Bayer
CropScience, are pushing for the right to grow herbicide tolerant (HT) rice
here. And Ventria Bioscience, a small biotechnology company located in
Sacramento, is seeking approval to enlarge the area they use to test their
transgenic human protein rice. While they await approval for full commercial
planting, both types of transgenic rice are being grown in the open air in the
Sacramento Valley, where birds, insects, and other wildlife have unfettered
access to them.

Ventria
Bioscience's rice is generating the most debate. Currently, the company is
testing rice that has been genetically engineered with human genes to make two
proteins found in human breast milk, lysozyme and lactoferrin. Nursing mothers
supply these proteins to their babies in their milk, offering them enhanced
resistance to bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microbes. Lactoferrin
provides an iron supplement as well. While Ventria is experimenting with
several human gene-enhanced rice strains, it plans to use its
human-breast-milk-laced rice as an "alternative to the use of antibiotics in
poultry diets" and as a supplement in infant formula. Why would anyone take
proteins that are already available in their natural form and genetically
engineer them to create new recombinant forms of these same proteins? Because
this is the only way a company can patent and own these valuable substances.
This new and largely untested scheme raises unprecedented agricultural,
economic, legal, environmental, and ethical questions. So, the general public
might assume that the regulatory agencies involved in approving such experimental
uses of food crops are addressing these issues adequately. Unfortunately, that
is not happening.

Risk Paralysis

When it comes to GMOs in general, and transgenic
pharmaceutical rice in particular, the regulatory field is muddy.
Responsibility for field testing GMOs falls to the United States Department of
Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). APHIS's job
is to ensure that plant and animal diseases don't proliferate. It does not look
at the larger ecological impacts of newly created organisms. Basically, APHIS
is concerned with protecting agricultural plants and animals from invasive
pests and pathogens, including protecting crops from wildlife, not the other
way around. To do its job, APHIS depends on applicants to volunteer information
about the potential risks their products might pose. But once permitted field
tests are completed, the products are "deregulated" and APHIS conducts no
further monitoring or evaluation.

GMO
crops that involve pesticides come under the purview of the Environmental
Protection Agency, but the two forms of rice currently proposed for
commercialization in California are not pesticidal GMOs. The Food and Drug
Administration regulates drugs, of course, but they ruled long ago that GMO
foods were equivalent to conventional foods, so unless something like a food
allergy might be involved, they are not concerned. Ventria Bioscience, a
company founded by some long-time biotech veterans, is calling its rice a
"medicinal food," a term that is undefined. If their products are not used as
drugs, they just might fall between cracks in the regulatory framework.

That
leaves the state regulatory process to deal with this problem. California rice
is unique in that the state legislature created a quasi-public body (the
California Rice Commission, or CRC) to handle certain regulatory, educational,
and promotional matters. It's a combination grower-processor-commodity-trade
group. Recently the state charged it with reviewing proposals for transgenic
rice and offering rulemaking recommendations to the state department of
agriculture.

Tim
Johnson, CRC's president, said that California rice growers are the only
commodity industry that has the ability to review new varieties and implement
planting and handling protocols. "Otherwise," he said, "there would be no
process beyond what APHIS does." He said that the CRC does not have the power
to stop a particular rice variety from being planted and that he would give GMO
rice the same respect as any variety that had commercial value. Johnson is
confident that the California rice industry can develop protocols that will
contain transgenic rice varieties and avoid the rampant contamination that has,
for instance, plagued the corn industry.

This
echoes what Ventria Bioscience is saying: their rice does not pose a risk to
the environment or other rice growers because, unlike corn, rice is a
self-pollinating plant. And they say the protocols they are proposing to the
CRC, which will impose extensive human controls over planting, harvesting, and
handling-including using "dedicated" equipment and harvesters-will ensure that
contamination does not occur. Other commodity crops have achieved some success
at such "identity preservation" efforts, but the process is expensive and it
allows for a small amount of background GMO contamination.

In
conventional corn, soy, and canola crops in the United States, such
contamination is now rampant. In February the Union of Concerned Scientists
(UCS) reported that more than two-thirds of these crops were contaminated with
genetically engineered DNA. And contamination of the food supply by
biopharmaceuticals is also now a fact, not just a fear. In 2002, biopharmed
corn was found to have contaminated conventional soy grown for food. Dr. Jane
Rissler, a plant pathologist at UCS and the report's co-author, says that now,
in addition to GMO contamination, "among the potential contaminants are genes
from crops engineered to produce drugs, plastics, and vaccines." When it comes
to these new recombinant pharmaceutical and industrial proteins, experts like
Bill Freese, a research analyst for Friends of the Earth (FOE) and author of an
FOE report on biopharming, says there can be nothing less than "zero tolerance"
for contamination of the human food supply.

In
California, the possibility that any GMO rice, let alone biopharmed rice, might
get into other rice fields or mills is causing real concern. Millers say they
won't touch transgenic rice because they have no means of keeping it separate
from ordinary rice. The insurance industry will not consider taking on any GMO
risks. Organic rice farmers say they are feeling particularly vulnerable
because GMO contamination of their crops would cost them both their
certification and their premium markets. And the legal questions about who is
liable for contamination have not been sorted out; so far, farmers and
processors have been left holding the bag. Still, Aventis (now Bayer Crop
Science), the same company that was responsible for extensive GMO contamination
in Europe and the Starlink food recall fiasco in the United States (which cost
taxpayers, farmers, and food processors millions), is proceeding as if their
transgenic rice will not cause contamination problems.

There
is nothing in the pending protocols or in the field practices currently being
used by biopharming companies that would require them to take precautions
against exposing wildlife to these novel proteins, such as netting to protect
the health of birds or prevent them from transporting the grain to other rice
fields. Other countries are not so sanguine. Brazil, for instance, requires
protective netting over test plots of herbicide- tolerant rice. When
authorities found test plots without it, they ordered the crops destroyed.

I
asked the CRC if they were considering insisting on wildlife protections in
their protocols. Johnson emphasized that all questions were still open, but
that they were satisfied with an APHIS finding that biopharmed rice would have
"no significant impact" on wildlife. Any restrictions CRC imposed, Johnson
said, would require a scientific basis. However, there is no scientific basis for coming to a conclusion, one
way or another. The CRC's current position is based on an oral communication
from APHIS, which bases their conclusion on a single environmental assessment
they did on another variety of Ventria's biopharmaceutical rice in 1997. That
assessment relied only on general assumptions about transgenics plus
information "supplied by the applicant." Without any independent analysis or
studies, APHIS concluded that there is "no reason to believe" there would be
any impact on wildlife or other "non-target organisms."

The
dismal lack of research on how genetically engineered crops affect wildlife
demonstrates just how inadequate the federal regulatory system is. In the 1980s
the biotechnology industry successfully lobbied the government to forgo any new
legislation governing GMOs. Today, federal agencies use the same laws that were
passed to control chemicals to address the impacts of GMOs, even though GMOs
are living organisms that behave very differently in the natural world. When
Dan Quayle announced the regulatory framework for biotechnology in 1986, he set
forth the system that is, with minor revisions, still used: industry
voluntarily provides information on their products to the government and it is
accepted at face value. No independent analysis or review is conducted. Thus,
biotechnology companies do not need to reveal flaws in their products or even
study environmental impacts. And they use the cloak of "confidential business
information" to hide crucial facts, such as the locations of open-air test
plots. The public, nearby farmers, or even school gardens, cannot find out if a
biopharm is planted next door. There are thousands of such secret test plots
all over the country, growing biopharmed plants that are visually
indistinguishable from conventional crops.

Federal
agencies simply ignore studies documenting the environmental and human health
problems caused by transgenic crops. But opponents of transgenic rice hope that
the scientific evidence they are presenting to the CRC will get a fair review.
They are challenging the biopharming industry's claim that rice is a
self-contained crop, for instance, citing studies done in Canada and Europe that
show a high degree of interbreeding between rice varieties. Commercial rice is
also known to cross with nearby weedy relatives such as red rice. Farmer groups
are pointing out that growing transgenic rice will have serious environmental
side-effects. There are two basic types of GMO crops ("herbicide-tolerant" and
"insect-resistant"), and in many cases both are using more herbicides and
exposing the environment to more insecticides than conventional crops. A recent
study in Britain found that herbicide-tolerant crops lower insect populations
and harm biodiversity. Through cross-pollination and natural selection (driven
by heavy doses of herbicides), the planting of herbicide-tolerant crops can
lead to the creation of so-called superweeds that are resistant to one or more
herbicides. And insect-resistant crops can create resistance to commonly used
pesticides in the insects they target, as well as harm beneficial insects.

One
group that is actively engaged in educating both the regulators and the general
public is Californians for GE-Free Agriculture, a coalition of farmer,
environmental, and consumer groups. Their campaign coordinator, Renata
Brillinger, says that as important as the environmental issues are, she thinks
the economic issues will determine whether GMO rice will be grown in
California. Brillinger points out that the industry would be taking a big risk
by approving transgenic rice, because California rice is sold to discerning
domestic customers who do not want GMOs and is shipped to Asian markets that
have already rejected GMOs. Brillinger points out that there are no real
agronomic benefits to transgenic rice, and the farmers who are getting a
premium for their rice are going organic, not transgenic. And, she asks, what
would be the benefit for the few farmers who might grow biopharmed rice, given
the enormous risks to the environment and food supply? The key consideration,
she says, is that, as with any GMO crop, "contamination of the food supply is
virtually inevitable"-and that is a
risk the rice industry can't afford.

A Solution in Search of a Problem?

What about consumers? When they have a choice, they
reject GMOs. Why would they want biopharmaceutical GMOs? The proteins Ventria
Bioscience grows in their transgenic rice are recombinant plant-produced
proteins, which, as explained earlier, are already available in their natural
form. Even if Ventria could prove that their plant-based recombinant genes were
as useful as the natural proteins are-and that is still an open question-there
is no good reason why a mother would pay the higher price, and take the extra
risk, of feeding her baby transgenic infant formula.

Experts
like Bill Freese of FOE and Michael Hanson of the Consumers Union question
whether biopharming can produce as promised. They are concerned with the
different ways that plants, as opposed to animals, produce proteins. And if
that issue does not cause regulators to pause, then they point out that
biopharmaceuticals in foods have enormous potential for causing catastrophic
human health problems. These recombinant proteins are likely to contain
allergens, particularly dangerous for infants. Does Ventria Bioscience really
intend to use their products in infant formula? Or are they actually aiming at
the far more lucrative, and far less regulated, poultry feed market? You would
think that biopharmaceutical companies would question the wisdom of producing a
crop that poses so many dangers and that customers wouldn't want. Instead, like
the ducks rushing to find a place to ride out the rain, Ventria seems to be
hunkering down, weathering the storms of protest around it.

Are
biopharmaceuticals in food another extremely expensive biotechnological fix for
third-world problems that we already know how to solve, like treating infant
diarrhea? Is agriculture now going to be used as a public health tool without
public debate or any process that compares its risks and benefits with
existing, and perhaps less expensive and more socially acceptable, means? And,
in the final analysis, isn't there something just fundamentally creepy, if not
unethical, about putting patented human genes into a food crop?

It's
unlikely that the CRC will complete its review in time for Ventria to
commercialize their rice this year. Time will tell if the CRC process, and the
state rulemaking that will follow, will result in effective containment or
elimination of the risks posed by biopharmed and transgenic rice. As of early
2004, the APHIS field test database lists 190 permits for release of transgenic
rice into the environment in California. Ventria has been issued 12 APHIS field
test permits for GMO rice, seven of them for California. The other five are for
Hawaii, the state with the most biopharming and transgenic seed production. But
compared to California, Hawaii has much weaker regulatory oversight and a much
more vulnerable environment. It is also home to some of the most endangered
biodiversity in the world.

Last
winter was the centennial of the National Wildlife Refuge system, created by
President Theodore Roosevelt in March 1903. Not long after that, the United
States signed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. And throughout the 20th century, while development and agriculture
took their toll, efforts to protect wildlife continued. Even the rice industry
began to balance production with conservation. As a result of all these
efforts, our covenant with migratory birds-that they would return each year as
long as we left them something to eat and a decent place to rest-seems to be
holding.

While
I was visiting the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, and listening to the
gabble of the returning geese, I was thinking about Rachel Carson's classic
Silent Spring. She documented the damage being done to birds by chemicals,
and in the following decades the public responded to her work with robust
environmental laws. Today, we are still dealing with pesticides, which Carson
called "weapons against nature." And we are contending with new weapons against
nature: transgenic crops, and the even more frightening biopharmaceutical
crops. As a result, birds and people alike are unwittingly consuming both toxic
chemicals and GMOs. Given how little we know about the impacts of GMOs, that
means we are all participating in a vast, uncontrolled genetic experiment.

Carson's
fears that chemical contamination would hush the voices of the natural world
were well founded. Now we need to know how genetic contamination will affect
birds, the environment, and even ourselves. But because of a compromised
governmental role and an industry backlash against environmental regulation,
the studies that would address these questions are not being done. Today,
compared to the rise of the environmental movement 40 years ago, there is
almost no public clamor calling for new laws and insisting that scientists working
in the public interest address the impacts of genetic contamination. This
subdued nature of public protest, this political quiescence, particularly in
the face of so much that is threatening an increasingly vulnerable natural
world, is, perhaps, a far more perilous silence.

Claire
Hope Cummings
is an environmental journalist. She combines her writing with her farming
interests, which have included rice farming and processing in both California
and Vietnam. She practiced environmental law for 20 years and for four years
was an attorney with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.